Moreover, I Saw That I Must Be Early
Awake; For These Chestnut Gardens Had Been The Scene Of Industry No
Further Gone Than On The Day Before.
The slope was strewn with lopped
branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was propped
against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the peasants
use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals.
I picked a meal
in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide myself from the road; and
I daresay I was as much concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's
band above upon the Lozere, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the old
times of psalm-singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the
Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale comes back into
my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, riding with a party of dragoons
and a notary at his saddlebow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the
country hamlets, entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and
his men at dinner, gaily seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with
box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream.
Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau would be
painting similar subjects.
This was a very different camp from that of the night before in the cool
and silent pine-woods. It was warm and even stifling in the valley.
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